Page:Wonder Stories Quarterly Volume 2 Number 2 (Winter 1931).djvu/78

 "But I say—" Graham stammered.

He saw the starlight mirrored in her eyes. Wan, misty starlight.

He stammered, "But I say—"

A step sounded. A passenger wandered past and stood at one of the window-portes nearby, gazing at the glories of the firmament. His profile half seen in the star-light resembled the Martian's, and that sardonic smile, the smile of a man content to wait—Alma said awkwardly,

"I—really I must be going below. It's very late."

He stood beside her. "Good night—"

"Good night," she said, and left him.

UITE a sight, isn't it?" said Graham. "This way, Alma."

She followed him along the metal catwalk. The central domepeak spread over them. The black firmament was a glory of blazing worlds through the overhead windows. The Comet was five days out from Mars. The planet hung like a great reddish full-moon behind the ship's stern. The round disk of Sun was ahead—a fiery ball in the blackness blazing with prismatic colors, its gigantic streamers of flame mounting to make the brilliant corona.

The network of ladders and bridges up here in the ship's mid-dome section was illumined by mingled starlight and sunlight. The top of the cabin superstructure spread some twenty feet beneath Graham and Alma. It was like being in the rigging of an ancient surface ship.

"Only my room and the Captain's quarters up here," Graham was saying. They passed a transverse glassite bulkhead; Graham slid an airport door and they went through the opening.

"You're sure it is all right for me to come?" the girl asked.

"Of course," he laughed. "I have Captain Blake's permission. He's down on the forward bridge now. No one up here. I'll show you his chart room—then my helio-room."

By the ship time it was early evening of the fifth night out from Mars. The strains of music wafted up from the forward lounge. The passengers were in a gay mood. And Graham too was very happy. The flush on Alma's cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes as she clung to him on the narrow walk and gazed so interestedly

"These are the Captain's rooms," he said. He showed her the two small connecting rooms—metal cubbies perched here like birds' nests. A chart room, and the Captain's bedroom. They glanced in.

On a table by the Captain's bed stood a glass of milk and a small plate of sandwiches—his accustomed meal before he retired—which a few moments before a steward had placed there. And a carafe of drinking water was in a rack over the bed.

"And my cubby is along the bridge—this way."

Twenty feet further, on the opposite side of the catwalk hung Graham's helio cubby. It was a metal box-like room some ten feet square by six feet high. Graham's bunk was in a bulge of one of its walls, with a portière draped before it.

"So this is where you work, Graham?"

"Yes," he said. "Sit down, Alma. I've a message to send. I'll show you."

The room was dim with starlight from its single square side window. The radio sending equipment and the rotary helio-mirrors, prisms and light portes were ranged on an instrument table. There was another small table, with messages on files; and two small chairs.

Alma sat down, gazing out of the window. Its glassite pane was merged here with the dome. There were two doors to the room, both of which had transparent glassite panes. One gave directly onto a pressure chamber and then to open space—an exit porte for use only to ventilate the room when the ship was in the atmosphere or an emergency exit into space. The other door, on the opposite side, was the one by which Graham and Alma had just entered from the catwalk. They left it open; the room was fairly hot.

"Like my quarters?" said Graham. "You do get a marvelous view. Don't you think so? And it seems different—you're more detached somehow. Don't you feel it?"

An awkwardness was upon him. Having Alma alone up here—He found himself trembling. He drew up his chair beside her.

"Alma, I didn't bring you to watch me send a message. I—there's something I want to say to you. I wanted to say it up here—really alone with you. Up here alone—with the stars around us."

His hand touched hers; he could feel her trembling, emotion-swept like himself.

"Graham—"

As though it were fate always snatching them apart, a vague moving shadow fell upon the starlit table before them.

"Graham, look!"

A shadow from the catwalk doorway. Graham leaped up. At the door he was just in time to see a man's figure disappearing past the Captain's cabin.

"What is it, Graham?"

"That damned Martian—that Kol—eavesdropping on us! Sit quiet, Alma! By Heaven—"

He got no further. Beyond the network of bridges the firmament was visible through the ship's bow dome-peak. Graham caught a glimpse of a huge black shape out there; a great whirling rock dashing through space. The sunlight and starlight edged it, as in the blackness it suddenly became visible—forbidding—menacing—It had been a thousand miles away a minute before; but now like a juggernaut it leaped toward them. A derelict asteroid! There would be a collision!

Graham turned. "Alma—" He was aware that he had clutched her. He heard the doomed Comet's interior resounding with bells; the danger siren starting its shriek. An instant of chaos. The ship lurched upward, its rocket exhausts working furiously! Too late! A blinding flash